Junior Research Group “Digital Citizenship in Network Technologies”
The junior research group "Digital Citizenship in Network Technologies (DICINT): The Formation of Opinion Homogeneity in Online Networks and its Effects on Civic Participation" was established in January 2018, being led by Jun.-Prof. Dr. German Neubaum.
This group is located in the intersection of psychology, computer science, as well as communication studies and is part of the Department of Computer Science and Applied Cognitive Science in the Faculty of Engineering.
Funded by the program "Digital Society" (Ministry of Culture and Science of the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia), this junior research group has a term of five years (Projektträger Jülich).
Research Interests
This junior research group is intended to address how homogenous and heterogeneous opinion climates online influence whether and how citizens (a) perceive opinion climates, (b) acquire knowledge about prevailing issues, (c) form their personal opinion (d) develop political efficacy, political interest as well as political tolerance and (e) are willing to participate in discussions and collective actions online and offline.
The working program includes methods from computer science, communication studies and psychology, addressing communication processes on a micro-, meso-, and macro-level. The following topics are of interest:
- Prevalence of opinion homogeneity/heterogeneity in online networks
- Effects of opinion homogeneity/heterogeneity on political learning and opinion formation
- Effects of opinion homogeneity/heterogeneity on participatory activities online
- Assessment of group and societal dynamics in opinion climates on social media
- Computational simulation of group and societal dynamics in online opinion climates
- Spillover effects from online to offline behavior
- Theoretical implications to strengthen (digital) citizenship
Research Associates in the Junior Research Group
Selected Publications
Cargnino, M. (2020). The interplay of online network homogeneity, populist attitudes, and conspiratorial beliefs: Empirical evidence from a survey on German Facebook users. International Journal of Public Opinion Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edaa036
Cargnino, M., & Neubaum, G. (2019). Homogeneity on social networking sites: Evaluating users’ perceptions. Research Report. Germany: University of Duisburg-Essen.
Cargnino, M., & Neubaum, G. (2020). Are we deliberately captivated in homogeneous cocoons? An investigation on political tie building on social networking sites. Mass Communication and Society. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2020.1805632
Neubaum, G., & Lane, D. S. (accepted in principle). Nevertheless, it persists: Political self-effects in the context of persistent social media [Registered Report]. Journal of Media Psychology.
Neubaum, G., Cargnino, M., Winter, S., & Dvir-Gvirsman, S. (2021). “You’re still worth it” The moral and relational context of politically motivated unfriending decisions in online networks. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243049
Neubaum, G., Cargnino, M., & Maleszka, J. (2021). How Facebook users experience political disagreements and make decisions about the political homogenization of their online network. International Journal of Communication, 15, 187-206.
Neubaum, G., Cargnino, M., Röchert, D., & Maleszka, J. (2018). Gefangen im Netz der Gleichdenkenden? Eine medienpsychologische Analyse von (politischer) Homogenität in sozialen Medien. Psychologie in Österreich, 5, 384-390.
Röchert, D., Neubaum, G., Ross, B., Brachten, F., & Stieglitz, S. (2020). Opinion-based homogeneity on YouTube: Combining sentiment and social network analysis. Computational Communication Research, 2, 81-108. https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2020.1.004.ROCH
Röchert, D., Neubaum, G., Stieglitz, S (2020). Identifying Political Sentiments on YouTube: A Systematic Comparison regarding the Accuracy of Recurrent Neural Network and Machine Learning Models. In 2nd Multidisciplinary International Symposium on Disinformation in Open Online Media (MISDOOM2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61841-4_8